The complicated world of librarians

Summary:
You probably don’t put much thought into bibliographic entries, but that’s
because you probably aren’t a librarian. I’m not either, but I am
intrigued by a requirements document for bibliographic information
put out by the IFLA. (Being me, I eventually use a certain comedic
space serial as an example. Try to guess which one.)

This is a long document, and I won’t claim to have read it all, but gist of it
that’s currently interesting to me is the classification of created works
(books, films, plays, sculpture, etc.). Essentially, there is a four-tier
system of classification:

Works, distinct intellectual or artistic creations (such as Hamlet)

Expressions, intellectual or artistic realizations of works
(such as the script to Hamlet)

Manifestations, physical embodiments of expressions of works
(such as a printing of the script to Hamlet)

Items, exemplars of manifestations (such as my copy of a printing
of the script to Hamlet)

A particular work may be realized by multiple expressions, as in the case of
translation or revision. However, once we get to the level of adaptation,
we start producing new works. Thus, Baz Lurhmann’s William Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet would be considered a separate work from William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, even though it derives from it.
(Presumably, Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat would
also be considered a derivative work, rather than an expression, as it
takes considerable liberties in translation.)

You may well be asking, why is this useful? Well, it does give you a framework
for discussing some complex relationships between works. For example,
let’s take a hypothetical book My Life, by Joe Example (we’ll call this
w1). This work is realized by Mr Example’s original
English-language text (e1), and also by Herr Beispiel’s
German translation (e2). So far, we have these
relationships:

e1 realizes w1

e2 realizes w1

e2 translates e1

Now, let’s say some errors are detected in Herr Beispiel’s translation and
a revised German translation is released (e3). This
gives us:

e3 realizes w1

e3 translates e1

e3 revises e2

Meanwhile, Mr Example has been making revisions of his own, which
results in a second edition of My Life (e4).

e4 realizes w1

e4 revises e1

This would of course require a third German translation (e5),
and so forth. What’s cool about this model is that it allows us
to make these distinctions in a sensible way. All five expressions
listed above are realizations of the same work, and they also have
various connections to each other. A library which had copies of all
five could use this system to note that they are all related but
different versions of the same work.

But, of course expressions aren’t physical objects either. For example,
e1 is embodied by three manifestations: a
hard-bound edition (m1), a paperback
(m2), and the large-print edition
(m3). All three of these are different only
in less-essential details like their binding or font choice, but it
still is a useful distinction to make. For example, the pagination may
be different among the three.

Finally, each manifestation exists as a number of items, including
a copy with marginal notes written in crayon by Mr Example’s three-year-old
daughter (i1).

If you’re familiar with RDF, you probably looked at those relationships
I listed above and though, “Hey, those would be pretty easy to model
in RDF.” Well, yeah. That’s why I wrote them that way. I don’t know
when or how often this level of detail would be necessary, but it does
give a sense of what needs to be considered when cataloging creations
on the net.

For example, let’s indulge my tendency to relate everything to myself
by examining how this model would describe Starcruiser Anonymous.
Since it’s a serial, we would probably consider each episode an
independent work which is a component of the larger work.

w2 — Starcruiser Anonymous

w2.1 — Prologue

w2.2 — Episode 1

…

This allows us to give a distinct publication date for each episode. Now it
gets complicated: the first fifteen or so parts of Starcruiser Anonymous
exist in four forms:

The original text sent to the Superguy mailing list (and found in the archives)

A slightly revised text (mostly typo corrections) available at the web site

The same revised text gathered into five-episode chunks and published in
Hostigos

The forthcoming HTML version (which incorporates further minor revisions)

I suspect this would be modeled as three expressions (one for each set of
revisions), one of which has two manifestations (text files on the web and
printed material in a fanzine). I suspect the notion of “items” doesn’t
work well for electronic documents, but my copy of Hostigos, Winter 1997
is undeniably one. Since Hostigos is a collection, it is
another work which contains multiple component works, but this is where
I have to start drawing graphs or I’ll get lost. (Or perhaps it’s because
it’s too late to be thinking about this stuff. I’ll have to sleep on that….)

In any case, if I do try a detailed description of Starcruiser Anonymous
in RDF someday, expect to see some of the ideas described here. If you’re
looking for a way to catalogue creative works, it’s always a good idea to
see what the librarians are doing.